Diversity Priorities

The Chair of the Firm has ultimate responsibility for leading the Firm’s diversity initiatives, working with the Diversity and Inclusion Partner and Director of Diversity and Inclusion. In addition, the Diversity Advisory Board and Women's Advisory Board provide advice to Firm Leadership on the many issues and projects related to the Firm's recruitment, retention, and promotion of underrepresented individuals and women lawyers, respectively. Under their direction, our long-term priorities are to:

• Review key processes of the Firm to ensure that our commitment to our values, including diversity, are emphasized, implemented, and incorporated in all that we do.
• Coordinate our diversity-focus strategies with the Firm’s overall leadership strategies.
• Assess our current talent with an eye toward maintaining, developing, and advancing our current high-potential colleagues and ensuring the continued diversity of our talent pool. Accomplishing this goal will require focused attention on key processes that impact growth and professional development, including work coordination, individualized career planning, effective evaluations, effective mentor assignments, leadership opportunities, and meaningful client exposure.
• Promote camaraderie, collegiality, and collaboration among our offices, departments, practice groups, attorneys, managers, paralegals, and staff across the Firm with the aim of making the practice at O’Melveny & Myers the best achievable professional and personal experience.
• Accelerate the development of leaders and practice and client teams that reflect our goals of diversity, consistent with our values and commitment to being at the vanguard of the legal profession. In so doing, we not only recognize that the marketplace demands diversity, but also that our creation of a more diverse and inclusive environment in which to practice law provides additional practice strength.
• Foster ongoing and constructive dialogue within the Firm and the legal community about diversity and seeking creative ways to further and reinforce our diversity commitment. 

This past year, we focused on several key areas to advance our goals and achieve demonstrable results. The initiatives involved:

• Effectively communicating our goals and accomplishments both to the O'Melveny community and our external communities.
• Identifying and addressing issues of particular concern to women in the law firm environment.
• Celebrating our existing diversity through training, events, and frequent dialogue, including our annual, firmwide Embracing Diversity Day festivities, as well as supporting the activities of the Firm's affinity groups.
• Increasing O'Melveny's involvement in and sponsorship of legal and civil rights organizations to demonstrate tangibly the Firm's commitment to improving diversity within the legal profession and all areas of broader society.
• Regularly reviewing and analyzing our recruiting, attrition, and promotion processes and data to determine discernable trends and fine-tune our strategies.